


Confessional

by Dunyazad9



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: 2020 Presidential primary, Discussion of sex but no actual smut, M/M, Manchester 'verse, Past Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21799324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunyazad9/pseuds/Dunyazad9
Summary: Two men carrying heavy burdens. One of them seeks forgiveness through the rites of the church. Both of them need someone to talk to.
Relationships: Chasten Buttigieg/Peter Buttigieg
Comments: 21
Kudos: 27





	Confessional

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks and much appreciation to Pockettreatpete, who created the compelling Manchester NH universe.

> When marital unity is imperiled by dissension, it shall be the duty, if possible, of either or both parties, before taking legal action, to lay the matter before a Member of the Clergy; it shall be the duty of such Member of the Clergy to act first to protect and promote the physical and emotional safety of those involved and only then, if it be possible, to labor that the parties may be reconciled. 
> 
> _Constitution and Canons for the Governance of The Episcopal Church_ (2018 ed.) Canon 19 § 1.
> 
> When the penitent has confessed all serious sins troubling the conscience and has given evidence of due contrition, the priest gives such counsel and encouragement as are needed and pronounces absolution. Before giving absolution, the priest may assign to the penitent a psalm, prayer, or hymn to be said, or something to be done, as a sign of penitence and act of thanksgiving.
> 
> Pastoral Office of Reconciliation of a Penitent, _The Book of Common Prayer_ (2007 ed.) at 446.

**Peter**

He parked in the lot next to the cathedral, walked the short distance to the entrance with its Tudor Gothic arch, and slowly climbed the five steps from the nondescript sidewalk to the red double doors. St. James’ was a modest Midwestern reduction of the great cathedrals of England

The space between the steps and the street had seemed so much larger when they had burst out of the double doors on that bright afternoon in June, into the jubilant embrace of their families, friends and wedding party. Unbidden, he remembered the sense of boundless possibility he had felt then, the future of their lives together stretching before them to a horizon without limit, a future of shared joy and life in all its fullness. The contrast with the terrible reality of the present threatened to overpower him with its force, and the tight knot of pain he had carried in his chest for the last eight months swelled into agony. 

He stopped at the door long enough to compose himself before opening it. If someone had told him that his dream of a whole, complete and infinitely loving life with Chasten would turn to dust before their second anniversary, he would have listened in stunned disbelief. 

And yet, here he was, his grief entirely the product of his own fault. He didn’t know what he could do to earn forgiveness. Theoretically and doctrinally, he knew, forgiveness could not be earned but was a product of God’s grace. Yet as heretical as it sounded, he wasn’t sure that it mattered whether God forgave him when Chasten so clearly did not. 

The cathedral staff at work in the building on his way to Brian’s office greeted him and congratulated him on how well the campaign was going. He tried to respond with a cheerfulness he did not feel. The closer the campaign got to the convention, the closer he got to the end of his marriage. 

Father Brian welcomed him into his office and motioned him into a chair. He brought a chair around so that it would face him rather than sitting behind his desk. Pete had read the rubric in the Book of Common Prayer and knew that this was one of the suggested positions for hearing a confession.

The tension he felt was daunting, but Brian was a comforting presence. Tall, solid, with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard, he’d been doing this a long time and knew how to put people at ease, whether it was a homeless person at the end of his tether or a presidential candidate whose personal life was in shambles. “Congratulations on Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland,” he smiled as Pete sat down.

“Well, we did lose Connecticut and Rhode Island,” Pete responded. “And Delaware, of course.”

“New York and Pennsylvania are the big prizes,” Brian shrugged. “And you’ll get to be the favorite son here in Indiana in less than a week.”

Pete smiled in spite of himself; he’d seen the campaign’s internal polls.

He began hesitantly, “As I said on the phone, I’m here as a penitent.”

“And I’m here to listen.” Brian’s voice and his whole bearing radiated empathy.

Pete lifted his head and locked eyes with the priest in that intense gaze he was famous for and willed his voice to be steady. 

“I’ve destroyed my marriage.”

A flicker of stunned surprise crossed Brian’s face and then was gone. It was not his job to be surprised. 

“The campaign …?” he asked hesitantly.

Pete shook his head. “No, Chasten has been amazing about the campaign. He’s thrown himself into it with an enthusiasm I sometimes wish I could match. It was something much more – ordinary.”

Brian was looking at him expectantly, and Pete was having difficulty saying the words.

“I was unfaithful.”

This time Brian showed no surprise. Pete reflected that he probably understood very well how devastating this had been for Chasten. Brian had counseled them before their wedding, and in the intense conversations they’d had, both of them had laid out everything they felt about the marriage vows they were about to take, and how their previous relationships – or in Pete’s case, lack of relationships – had shaped them. 

He tried to explain what had happened, or at least tell the story. Even as he recounted the events of those two nights on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, he knew that the story as he was telling it didn’t make a great deal of sense.

“It was one of the other candidates –” he began and saw Brian’s eyes widen subtly. Pete was respectful enough of Beto’s privacy not to mention him by name. He described how they had met and talked over drinks – too many drinks – in the hotel bar – how they’d shared their loneliness, talked about their respective spouses, and how when they left the bar and reached the door of Pete’s room, the other man had come on to him. How they’d gone into his room and had sex. How the other man had come to him the next night and they’d had even more intimate contact. And how Chasten had joined him on the campaign trail the next day, and Pete had told him what had happened as soon as they got to their room. 

He described how Chasten had run from the room, devastated. How’d he’d been gone for almost an hour, while Pete sat on a corner of the bed, wracked with guilt, and how awful he felt when Chasten returned, his face swollen and streaked with tears. How he’d tried to apologize, to atone, to do whatever he could to make things right, even drop out of the race, and Chasten had refused. 

Brian listened silently, showing not an ounce of judgmentalism. Finally, he asked, “Did you consider not telling Chasten what happened?”

Pete shook his head decisively. “No. I felt I had to tell him. We’ve never had secrets from each other, and I didn’t think I could face him with this between us.” Then he hesitated briefly. “After I saw how much I had hurt him, I wondered if perhaps I shouldn’t have ….”

“I think you did the right thing,” Brian’s voice was so supportive that Pete was surprised by his next question. “But I think you’re suggesting that you were surprised that he reacted as strongly as he did.”

Pete struggled for a moment to remember what he had felt the night he told Chasten and whether in fact he had been surprised. He couldn’t. All he could recall about that night was a blur, a haze. 

“I guess I must have been,” he said slowly. “Or else I never would have let myself do it in the first place.”

Brian continued to press, sympathetically but persistently, echoing Pete’s own words back to him. “Were you able to explain to Chasten why you let yourself do it?” 

Pete tried to remember the conversation he’d had with Chasten after they returned to South Bend, in which he’d tried to apologize and persuade Chasten to let him perform some sort of penance that would enable them to rebuild their relationship. All he could feel was an overwhelming sense of emptiness. “I told him what I felt was the truth – that I didn’t know why it happened, it just happened. And that I hoped we could move on from there.”

Brian sat up straighter and Pete felt a slight shift in the conversation. “I can see why Chasten might not have been satisfied with that explanation,” he said with a new note of firmness in his voice. “Don’t you?”

Taken aback, Pete felt his carefully maintained composure begin to crack. “I guess … maybe. But it was the only explanation I could give.”

Brian was silent for several beats, and Pete wondered with a sense of anxiety what he might be leading up to. 

Finally, the priest asked, “Peter. Tell me what you were feeling when you were with the other man.”

Pete wanted to protest that he wasn’t feeling anything, or that he couldn’t remember feeling anything. But the authority in Brian’s voice made him stop. Somewhere deep inside him, a tangle of emotions churned, just out of reach of his conscious mind. As he struggled to connect with those feelings, he felt something unfasten inside him. Something he had kept battened down tightly, willing himself not to let it out. He felt a sudden sense of release. 

He looked directly at Brian and said,

“Anger.”

Father Brian held Pete’s gaze for a few beats and asked. “Tell me what made you angry.”

Peter sank back in his chair, feeling as though a veil had been lifted. He wasn’t sure what to do with this new emotional clarity. He decided to answer the question as honestly as he could.

“You’ve heard some of this,” he began, slowly, trying to gather his thoughts into some semblance of a coherent narrative, “when you counseled us before our wedding. You know I didn’t come out publicly until I was thirty-three, and before that I told only a few close friends that I was gay.”

Father Brian continued to hold his gaze. “We talked about that, but we didn’t talk about the terrible toll that must have taken on you, and how you felt about your years in the closet.”

Pete took a deep breath and steeled himself. “It did take a toll. In college and at Oxford and throughout my twenties, the years when people my age were growing and maturing and learning to enjoy romantic and erotic love, I had none of those experiences. All around me I watched my peers form relationships, experience the transcendent emotions of being in love, and I had no access to those feelings. I was terribly attracted to many of the young men I saw around me, and I was terrified to act on that attraction. So I packed my feelings away.”

Brian’s compassionate gaze never wavered. “For someone who has had a full life in so many ways,” he said softly, “That must have left a huge hole in your spirit.”

Pete had to stop for a few moments just to steady himself against the wrenching in his chest. “It did. I longed to be in a relationship. But it couldn’t be with a man. So I told myself that even if I was at least a little bit gay, I could still find a relationship with a woman. I thought I could be bisexual.”

Brian’s face told him he understood.

“So I tried dating women. I made some good friends, but romantically, it didn’t work. The chemistry was never there. I couldn’t will it into existence. I finally realized it couldn’t work, that I just couldn’t respond erotically to women. So I gave up and packed away my feelings again.”

He paused a moment and twisted his hands together, seeking the right words to explain how this had led to his encounter with a fellow candidate in New Hampshire. “My gaydar has never been very good, but I knew guys at Harvard and Oxford who were openly gay. Or bisexual. I got very good at putting up those invisible shields that protected me from other guys’ – advances.”

He lifted his face to Brian’s compassionate gaze, seeking his understanding. “I began to resent those men who found it so easy to be gay, or bisexual. Especially those who were bisexual. They seemed to have it all – they could satisfy their attraction to other men without giving up the possibility of marriage and a family. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be like them, why I couldn’t be attracted to women as well as men. But I couldn’t – I wasn’t. So I packed it away again.”

Father Brian released a breath he’d been holding for the last few moments. “For someone who feels as deeply as you do, Peter, that must have been torment.”

Pete nodded tersely. “It was. During those years, I was intellectually alive, and in some ways I was emotionally pretty alive. But a part of me was dead, like a limb that has become numb from loss of blood flow.”

Brian was silent, letting this all sink in. “I’m beginning to understand why you were so vulnerable to the man on the campaign trail.”

Pete hadn’t thought of himself as vulnerable, but as someone who’d made a choice, and a dreadful one. But perhaps those years of repressing his sexual energy, of denying who he was and trying to be something he wasn’t, had left him vulnerable in a way he hadn’t considered.

He turned the thought over in his mind, seeing his encounter with Beto through the lens of this new insight. “He was almost an exemplar, a symbol of the men I knew during those years in the closet who were bisexual or bi-curious or whatever, but were able to have wives and children. They could be attracted to men and still live what society regarded as a normal life. They could have a family, raise kids, enjoy the respect of their community.” 

“I can see why you were angry,” Brian supplied.

Pete took a deep breath. “Yes. I was angry at this ostensibly straight guy who wanted to make out with me and then go home to his wife and kids. I was angry with myself for not having the courage to come out of the closet earlier, as Chasten did. I was angry for all the lost years, when I wanted to cut out that central part of me.”

“So you were thinking of Chasten when this was happening?”

This caught Pete by surprise. “No – I don’t think so –” and then he shook his head, trying to clear it. “Well, yes. Somewhere in the back of all the emotions I was feeling was the awareness that Chasten had been loving men since he was eighteen, simply because he had the courage to come out and live openly. And that I was the beneficiary of the experience he brought to our relationship.” He offered a wry smile.

“We talked a little about that in our counseling sessions,” Brian nodded. “How did you feel about that?”

Pete hesitated, still struggling to be honest. “Candidly, I felt a little conflicted. I was embarrassingly inexperienced when I met Chasten. And although he has brought me a depth of joy that is – astonishing -- on some level I think I may have felt a little resentment toward his experience and a little envious of his courage in coming out.”

Brian nodded sympathetically. “That makes sense. So did you feel that accepting the other man’s advances might somehow help to right that imbalance? To make up for some of what you had missed?” 

Pete felt the prick of tears behind his eyes as he acknowledged the truth of Brian’s words. It had been so stupid: a childish effort to reclaim those irretrievably lost years. He felt more ashamed than ever.

To answer Brian’s original question, and the one he hadn’t asked, he added. “So yes, I was thinking of Chasten, and trying to convince myself that although he’d be upset, he’d forgive me because he’d had casual encounters too, before we met.”

“But it didn’t work out that way, did it?” Brian said softly.

Pete put his head in his hands, shuddering in grief. “No,” he gulped, somehow still managing to keep the tears at bay. “I misjudged what he would feel. Until I thought about it more deeply and realized how seriously he took our vows to each other.”

He lifted his head and met Brian’s gaze again. “Do you know how many times the word ‘fidelity’ occurred in our marriage service?”

Brian smiled gently. “I have some idea.”

“I don’t know how to convince him to forgive me.” He looked at the floor, still fighting tear. 

“Are you sure he hasn’t? Watching you on the campaign trail, it doesn’t appear that much has changed.”

Pete shrugged. “Chasten’s a very good actor. He’s as supportive and affectionate as ever on the campaign trail, but when we’re alone together, he doesn’t respond to me with any emotion at all. He’s just –blank. His eyes are dead and his face is expressionless.”

“As you said, he’s a very good actor. But you may be wrong about which of those two parts is an act.”

Pete jerked his head up in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Peter, the fact is that we don’t forgive. We’re supposed to, we say we do, but forgiving those who have hurt us is one of the biggest challenges we face. Often, what we do when we’ve been hurt is try to punish the other person until we decide that we’ve punished him enough. And sometimes we keep on punishing even after we no longer feel the need to punish, because it’s become part of the dynamic of that relationship, and we don’t know how to change it. I don’t know if that’s what Chasten is doing, but it’s a possibility.”

“How can I find out?” 

“I don’t know. You hurt him. It sounds as though you hurt him very much. But I think you have to tell him what you’ve told me. He deserves to hear it. Consider it the task I’m assigning before I pronounce absolution.”

Pete gave him a small smile of acknowledgment. “I will.”

Brian reached for two copies of the Book of Common Prayer on the desk behind him and was about to hand one of them to Pete when he stopped. “One more thing I need to ask. Did, in fact, your encounter with the other man make up for any part of what you had missed?

With a flash of clarity, Pete shook his head decisively. “No. No, it didn’t. It was just – sensation. Sensation without any real feeling.”

“So, not at all like your experience with Chasten?”

“Oh no.” Pete took a deep breath. The power of everything he felt for Chasten surged up like a great cleansing wave. “Chasten taught me to embrace a part of me, my erotic self, I guess you would call it, that I had closed off. He made me connect with something incredibly profound – a creative, generative power that sprang from our connection with each other. It was never just physical, never just sensation. It was passionate, emotional and ultimately spiritual.”

Brian listened intently, and Pete added,

“I learned from Chasten that ‘the erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.’”

It was a quote, and the recognition in Brian’s eyes told Pete he understood. 

“Audre Lorde?”

“Yes,” Pete smiled. “I can’t imagine experiencing that with anyone else.”

Brian nodded. “You need to tell Chasten that, too.”

“I will.” 

Brian handed him the Book of Common Prayer open to the rite of Reconciliation of a Penitent and motioned him to begin with the ancient words, “Bless me, for I have sinned,” and they went through the short ritual together. When Pete confessed the “things done and left undone,” he added, “especially my betrayal of my beloved husband Chasten.” Finally, Brian pronounced the words of absolution, and the service ended with “Go in peace.” 

Pete left the cathedral by the same door at which he had entered, but feeling that he had shed an immense burden.

**Chasten**

He approached the red doors of the church projecting a casual confidence he did not feel. He’d walked from the Chocolate Café, leaving behind a group of his friends from the Montessori school who were relaxing after work. He had to talk to someone. And he couldn’t talk to his friends. Not about Peter. 

He’d considered seeing a therapist. A therapist would be obligated to keep their conversations confidential. And he was pretty sure there were decent therapists in South Bend. He’d listened to friends who were in couples counseling or family therapy, and his friendly interest in their experiences had yielded some good leads. But ultimately, he decided he couldn’t risk it. The minute someone spotted him walking into a therapist’s office, the rumors would start. And rumors would never, ever start if he could help it. 

But no one could fault him for attending a late Wednesday afternoon service at his husband’s church – technically, it was his church too, he reminded himself, since he was considered a member even if he had never formally been received and rarely attended. And if he happened to stay after the service for a friendly chat with the Dean of the Cathedral, well, no one could infer anything out of the ordinary from that. A small amount of research had confirmed his suspicion that the “seal of the confessional” was binding on the clergy in Peter’s tradition as well as in the Catholic church of his boyhood. He’d checked with Father Brian’s assistant to make sure he was available to meet after the service.

All his associations with this place were with the wedding and with Peter. He was determined to keep his feelings under control, but he couldn’t subdue the flood of conflicting emotions that threatened to overwhelm him as he approached the entrance. He had to pause until he was sure he could keep the tears at bay.

Finally, he felt contained enough to walk up the steps and enter the church, stopping to scrutinize the flyers and posters in the narthex as though this were just an ordinary day. In the nave, a small group of worshippers were already seated in the front pews, and Father Brian and Deacon Anne were getting ready to begin the service. They greeted him warmly. Everyone at St. James had always made him feel like an extra-special guest. For a moment he felt as though he were here under false pretenses, as though they welcomed him only because of his relationship with Peter, but their warmth seemed genuine.

The words of the service were familiar, hardly any different from the Roman Catholic masses he had attended when he was growing up. He was surprised to learn that today was the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, and even more surprised that Father Brian chose to devote his short homily to her. The Dean focused on her work as a diplomat, in a way that made her relatable to a 21st century audience. 

He spoke about how Catherine, a mystic and a Doctor of the Church who had decided when still a young child to devote her life to God, had chosen to join an order that allowed her to live outside the cloister and continue to engage with the world. How she had become a diplomat, plunging wholeheartedly into the work of resolving conflict among the city-states of 14th century Italy and between the supporters and opponents of the Pope. Father Brian emphasized her role as a peacemaker. He made the point that Catherine’s story resonated for contemporary Episcopalians because of the Anglican tradition of faith as being-in-the-world, of experiencing the world as a meeting place with God.

Chasten was fascinated and oddly moved by the homily. It made him long, achingly, for Peter, for the intensely intellectual and spiritual man he had married who might have been happy in an academic cloister but felt impelled to enter public service to make himself useful, to try to make the world a better place. The tears pricked his eyes again, and he tried to swallow the ache in his throat. 

The service moved on to the heart of the mass, and when they said the general confession, expressing penitence for “what we have done, and what we have left undone,” he thought again, uncomfortably, of Peter. He should have forgiven his husband, and he had not. He had continued to punish him when he should have stopped long ago. And he acknowledged, guiltily, that he never should have tried so hard to punish Peter in the first place.

The service ended, and most of the worshippers stayed afterwards to chat with Chasten and wish him and Pete the best of luck in the Indiana primary next week. He professed a cheerfulness he did not feel but was very good at imitating. Finally, everyone filed out, and Father Brian motioned to him to accompany him to his study. 

For all that he had longed to unburden himself to a sympathetic listener, it was difficult to begin the conversation. Father Brian offered him a chair and sat opposite him, face to face, instead of behind his desk Chasten looked down at the floor, steadied himself, then raised his head, forced himself to look directly at the priest and blurted out, 

“Peter and I are … estranged.”

Father Brian held his gaze with utmost compassion. “Then I think at least one of you must be in tremendous pain,” he said. 

The profound empathy in his voice made the dam inside Chasten burst at last. He held his head in his hands as the sobs wracked his body. Father Brian rose from his chair, knelt down in front of Chasten and embraced him. “Let me help.” 

Awkwardly, haltingly, he let the whole story tumble out. Of Peter’s betrayal, and how shattered he felt. How it was as though the bottom had dropped out of his trust in his husband. How he had moved to the guest room but had refused to let Peter drop out of the race or change his own role on the campaign trail. How badly Peter wanted reconciliation. How he, too, had an inchoate desire for reconciliation but could not seem to move forward. 

How he’d made a point of not announcing any decision about the future of their marriage until the campaign ended. He was pretty sure that Peter thought Chasten would divorce him when it was over. And yet the campaign had gone on, far longer than they had ever expected when they began this journey. 

Gradually, Chasten composed himself, and Father Brian moved back to his chair. “I don’t know what to do,” Chasten said miserably. “I don’t know why I can’t forgive him. I know I should. But every time I think of what happened in Manchester, the pain just comes crashing back.” 

“Chasten, Peter hurt you a great deal. Of course you are in pain. Please tell me what you are feeling.”

Chasten gulped and clasped his hands together. “All right.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “Let’s start with the fact that I never felt I deserved Peter. He’s the most amazing man I’ve ever met. He’s brilliant. Unbelievably accomplished. Gorgeous” – here he couldn’t suppress a wry smile – “physically fit, creative, adventurous, not to mention kind, gentle, empathetic and incredibly decent. When he told me he was in love with me, I could hardly believe it.” 

Father Brian smiled gently. “Chasten, I’m sure Peter would say that each of you fully deserves the other.”

Chasten acknowledged the comment with a small nod and took a deep breath. “The infidelity – well, you know, because we talked about it in counseling, how inexperienced Peter was compared to me. At some level I guess I considered my experience something I brought to the relationship, the marriage. A gift that I could give to Peter.” 

He paused, seeking a way to put their experience into words. 

“Peter had repressed his sexuality so thoroughly,” he said slowly. “It was difficult at first for him to let himself experience physical joy. Peter is a person of such deep emotions—”

At this, Father Brian nodded in agreement.

“—that I think he feared the chaos of the intense feelings we had for each other. But we got past that –" 

Chasten was finding that he felt surprisingly comfortable talking about this with a priest.

“And our erotic life became the source of the most powerful connection either of us had ever known. It opened us up to a capacity for feeling, a sense of completion, a deep knowledge of each other that is beyond anything I can describe. And we carried that capacity for joy into every area of our lives. It grounded us.”

Father Brian was fully attentive, leaning forward in his chair and absorbing everything Chasten was telling him. Chasten continued,

“Making love was like a well that kept replenishing itself. It was – transcendent.” 

He shuddered. “So when I learned that Peter had taken all that and given it to somebody else –”

Father Brian’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Whoa. What makes you think he did?”

Chasten paused, confused. “Well, I just assumed …” he trailed off.

Father Brian shook his head vigorously. “You can’t assume that. What Peter was experiencing could just as easily have been sensation devoid of feeling. In fact, I would say that’s much more likely.”

Chasten turned this thought over in his mind and realized that he had never asked Peter what he had felt when he and Beto were together. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Chasten, I think you need to talk to Peter about this. You are right to feel betrayed, but Peter’s experience with the other man may not have been what you think. Please talk to him.”

For the first time in nearly eight months, Chasten felt a little less hopeless about his marriage. “I will,” he promised.

As he rose to leave, Father Brian stood up and went to the bookcase and retrieved a small pamphlet from a stack on one of the shelves.

“I wanted to give you this –” he handed it to Chasten – it’s the text of a sermon that Elizabeth Keaton gave many years ago, during one of the General Conventions at which the church was debating the issue of marriage equality. Dr. Keaton is one of the formative theorists of LGBTQ liberation theology.”

Chasten nodded – he knew from Peter how many triennial General Conventions it had taken for the church to offer the marriage rite to same-sex couples. He knew that fortuitously, General Convention happened to be in session the day that Obergefell v. Hodges came down and that the ritual in which he and Peter were married was approved the next day. 

“From our conversation, it’s clear to me that you and Peter have experienced the erotic as a pathway to the spiritual. Whatever happens to your marriage, whether it ends or continues, I hope you know how extraordinary and wonderful that is.”

He opened the pamphlet. “Mother Keaton wrote, about the gift that LGBTQ persons have to give to the church, ‘I believe that our special task, as followers of Christ with a specific charism in this time and place in history, is to help ourselves - and the church in the process - to reclaim the erotic as an integral part of our spiritual lives.’ Chasten, her words apply to you as well: ‘We know, in the deepest places of our knowing, the pathway to our spiritual selves through our erotic selves because we have traveled it before. Our gift, our blessing, is to us to chart this journey for ourselves, and then to make those maps available to the wider church.’ You gave Peter an incredible gift. It is hard for me to imagine that he would squander it.”

Chasten took the pamphlet, so moved by the words that tears sprang to his eyes again, but no longer tears of grief. “Thank you. I will talk to Peter. It may have to wait until after the Indiana primary – we’re both leaving tonight for different parts of the state – but we will talk.” 

Father Brian’s embrace was kind and reassuring. “I’m glad you came to talk. Let me know if there is anything more I can do.”

“I will.” 

Chasten left the cathedral by the same door at which he had entered, but feeling that he had shed an immense burden.

**Author's Note:**

> April 29 is the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, and occurs on the day after the Acela Primary in 2020.
> 
> Works cited: The Book of Common Prayer, https://episcopalchurch.org/files/book_of_common_prayer.pdf  
> Audre Lorde, "The Uses of the Erotic," https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/11881_Chapter_5.pdf  
> Elizabeth Keaton, Our Gift To The Church: "We're gonna keep on walkin' forward," http://www.theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/32Ang/Epis/KeatonESexTheo.htm


End file.
